By Grace Kuria
Ghana’s pharmaceutical industry has approached AstraZeneca concerning acquiring rights to manufacture the vaccine locally.
The move could boost supplies and speed up the inoculation program in the country.
The country has to date received 842,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccines from sources including the COVAX initiative, which aims to ensure equitable access to Covid-19 shots, and has been allocated about 1.4 million more.
Bloomberg reports that a solution would be to set up a local production plant, Lucia Addae, executive secretary of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association of Ghana, said in an interview in Accra.
“We are having engagements with AstraZeneca mainly on the intellectual property to be able to manufacture their vaccines locally,” Addae said.
“We need government’s commitment to purchase and a guaranteed market for the vaccines because they cannot be sold on the open market or over the counter.”
(With input from Bloomberg)